Weekend Watch List: The VMAs Will Scandalize Your Children

Receive the latest popcornbiz updates in your inbox

Welcome to Watch List, where we identify five things on TV to watch while you stay at home and prepare for Hurricapocalypse 2011. LET’S GO!

2011 MTV VIDEO MUSIC AWARDS – 9:00PM Sunday (MTV & VH1) MTV's annual salute to videos it never airs is back again. There's no host this year, which I approve of. I know it seems mandatory for a show like this to have some comedian come out for five minutes and make decent jokes that fall flat with the audience because the audience is a bunch of self-involved jerks (Chris Rock was the only decent VMA host), but it isn't. Ever watch the Oscars? The hosts evaporate after the first 30 minutes. They're useless except to give critics something to bitch about. Anyway, this year you get performances from a robust lineup including Beyonce, Adele, Bruno Mars, Chris Brown (duck!), and Lady Gaga. Plus the usual supply of surprise performances and "outrageous" moments that weren't at all conceived in a pre-production meeting six months ago. ANTICIPATION: EDGE OF GLORY!

GEORGE W. BUSH: THE 9/11 INTERVIEW – 10:00PM Sunday (NatGeo - an NBC/Universal Network) The run of 9/11-themed programming continues as we get closer and closer to the tenth anniversary of the attacks. Sunday night, NatGeo airs this hourlong special featuring the former President talking candidly about that day and the impact it had both on the nation and on him personally. Tune in and hear a bit from the man who was in charge when the planes hit. ANTICIPATION: SAD!

LIVIN' FOR THE APOCALYPSE – 10:00PM Sunday (TLC) Meet four downhome folks who are fastidiously planning for the end of the world in 2012. I kind of understand why they're doing it. If you plan for the end of the world in 2012 and then it doesn't happen, well then you're playing with the house money after that, ain'tcha? ANTICIPATION: FLAWED LOGIC!

FLIGHTMARES – 10:00PM Sunday (Biography Channel) Here's a new show about people who survived harrowing moments traveling on airplanes, including a dude who was forced to land a plane after the pilot had a heart attack. Wait, that can actually happen? So my daydreams could become reality? NICE! ANTICIPATION: SCARY!

CURIOSITY: WHAT SANK TITANIC? – 8:00PM Sunday (Discovery) You need two hours to figure that out? ANTICIPATION: IT WAS AN ICEBERG, YOU IDIOTS!